Our Solution

The National Pact for Legal Timber, consisting of representatives from the public and private sector as well as from international cooperation and civil society, established as one of its main objectives the following: "Promote the adoption (by the actors of the wood value chain) of tools that allow demonstrating the legal origin of their products and, if appropriate, its sustainability claims". Qiru is such a tool. With Qiru we seek to create a new instrument, based on the blockchain technology (and smart contracts), to help the actors of the wood value chain monitor and verify the origin of timber along the entire production chain.

Potential barriers and solutions

• There are technological barriers according to the specific blockchain system that will be used to execute Qiru. Some blockchains currently deal with problems in terms of scalability and for this project this feature is essential. A careful analysis of the existing alternatives could minimize Qiru's risk and allow the scope of this initiative to be broadened.
• There is evidence that both public and private sector suffer from mismanagement and corruption which support illegal logging. It is very clear that without the collusion of some stakeholders illegal logging would be much more complicated. The introduction of Qiru may generate some reluctance of some of the actors within the wood sector. Our work will aim to make alliances with those actors who do seek formalization of the sector, mainly those that are already part of the "National Pact for Legal Timber."
• It is possible that some of the actors who would be users of the product and who will need to share information on the extraction processes of the wood to guarantee its origin, mainly loggers, cannot read or write. Taking that into consideration we are looking for our interface to be more intuitive and allow user friendly access for those with lower levels of training.